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Not just spin doctors. Commenters on the internets. Public opinion is made today by manipulating virtual peer groups on social media, discussion boards, online newspaper comment sections, newsgroups etc.

That's exactly the kind of psy-op that has been going on for weeks now in discussion forums all around the internets.

Slowly, but steadily comments pop up that put Snowden in a slightly bad light, for no good reason at all. Depending on the target audience of the forum, it's anything from "because 'MURICA" to what you just said.

Doesn't anyone notice that?

That's also why such programs are so enormously dangerous. Who in the world would know best how to manipulate public opinion? Only those whose sole reason of existance it is to peek into other peoples lives... so even when the programs are known (which happens very rarely), we can't fight it because they have already become too powerful.

A roommate is on there, and it works like a charm for him, he earns a wee bit of money selling bitcoins. He's thinking about how to protect himself against robberies, but I guess it's the same with any sort of dealing that involves value. So far there weren't any problems beyond the occassional buyer flaking out.

Nyder sends this quote from TorrentFreak:
"Swedish payment service provider Payson received an email stating that VPN services are no longer allowed to accept Visa and MasterCard payments due to a recent policy change. ... The new policy went into effect on Monday, leaving customers with a two-day window to find a solution. While the email remains vague about why this drastic decision was taken, in a telephone call Payson confirmed that it was complying with an urgent requirement from Visa and MasterCard to stop accepting payments for VPN services. 'It means that U.S. companies are forcing non-American companies not to allow people to protest their privacy and be anonymous, and thus the NSA can spy even more.'"
Oddly, this comes alongside news that MasterCard has backed down on its financial blockade against WikiLeaks.

adeelarshad82 writes "According to an 18-month study from German independent testing lab AV-Test, searches on Bing returned five times more links to malicious websites than Google searches. The study looked at nearly 40 million websites provided by seven different search engines. About 10 million results came from Bing and another 10 million from Google. 13 million sites were provided by the Russian service Yandex, with the rest coming from Blekko, Faroo, Teoma and Baidu respectively. Of these 40 million sites, AV-Test found 5,000 pieces of malware—and admittedly small percentage of websites."

DeviceGuru writes "Many of us have griped for years about Roku's retro one-dimensional user interface. Finally, in conjunction with the release of the new Roku 3 model, the Linux-based media streaming player is getting a two-dimensional facelift, making it quicker and easier to access favorite channels and find new ones. Current Roku users, who will now begin suffering from UI-envy, will be glad to learn that Roku plans to push out a firmware update next month to many earlier models, including the Roku LT, Roku HD (model 2500R), Roku 2 HD, Roku 2 XD, Roku 2 XS, and Roku Streaming Stick. A short demo of the new 2D Roku menu system is available in this YouTube video."